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The West End premiere of a play on the Profumo scandal will take place on the eve of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical on the same subject.

But while Lord Lloyd-Webber puts the spotlight on Stephen Ward, the osteopath “fall guy” of the affair, the play is based on the book, The Truth At Last, in which Christine Keeler gives her story of the affair with War Minister John Profumo that shocked Britain.

Entitled Keeler, the play was commissioned from writer Gill Adams by the actor Paul Nicholas after he read the book. It has the blessing of its subject, who said: “Gill Adams’s play is brilliant — she tells it like it was.”

Nicholas, 67, former star of TV’s Just Good Friends and a string of musicals, stars as Stephen Ward with Sarah Armstrong, currently on TV in the Oxo commercials, in the title role.

He said the 50th anniversary of the scandal seemed a good time to bring the show into the West End after a previous short run on the fringe: “I was a young man when the story broke in 1963. It was really the first time that the upper classes had come under pressure in my lifetime in terms of newspaper articles and things being found out. And it seemed like the first sex stories of young girls and older men.”

Lloyd Webber is sympathetic to Ward, who killed himself while standing trial for living off immoral earnings. Nicholas said: “I don’t think he was a pimp but I don’t think that a man of 48 hanging around with girls of 16 and introducing them to his friends was a particularly noble thing to do.

“We’re from Keeler’s point of view, but it’s not about Christine Keeler making herself look wonderful. It is a pretty honest straightforward version of events.”

Charing Cross Theatre from October 31 to December 14. Stephen Ward previews at the Aldwych Theatre from December 3. charingcrosstheatre.co.uk